TASBO TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT SOME OF THE 2015-16 EMERGING LEADERS
EMERGING LEADER PROFILES
JUDY L. MARCHMAN
SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR
EMERGING LEADER
Kathryn Estrada, Application Analyst II | Midland ISD
see both sides (administration and
business operations) and how they
work together,” she said. “I like my
position. It’s always changing and I
enjoy learning new things. I want to
keep moving forward in my career to
continue helping others and serving
our teachers and students.”
K
athryn Estrada grew up
ensconced in an academic
environment. Her parents
are both faculty members
at Sul Ross State University
in Alpine, and she always knew she
wanted to work in education. “But not
so much on the teaching side,” she
said.
Instead, Kathryn decided to pursue a
career in the technical side of education and earned her Bachelor of Arts
degree in administrative systems and
business technology from Sul Ross in
2011.
In her first and only job since graduating from Sul Ross, Kathryn, 24, joined
Midland ISD, which has about 24,000
students and employs about 3,000
people. She started on the student
administrative side but when an opportunity opened on the business side,
she jumped at it. As an application
analyst, Kathryn programs reports
for various departments that need
particular information and data for
grant purposes or for presentations
to leadership. But that’s just one part
of her job. She also provides training
and makes presentations for district
employees on the district’s management applications, and maintains and
corrects data to meet state and federal
reporting requirements.
“Plus, within my department, I get to
TASBO.ORG
TASBO Emerging Leaders offered
just such an opportunity to improve
herself.
“It’s such a benefit to network with
others throughout Texas and see how
other districts our size—and larger or
smaller ones—work on and resolve
different issues,” she said.
“We’re big Yankees fans,” she said,
admitting that while she’s always
loved baseball, she became a Yankees
fan after getting to know B.J. and his
family.
So far, Kathryn and B.J. have been
to ballparks in New York, St. Louis,
and Arlington but plan to add more as
soon as they can.
Kathryn’s enthusiasm for her role in
school business and zest for life make
it obvious why she is a perfect fit for
TASBO’s Emerging Leaders program.
A workshop on organizational and
personal strategic planning held at the
first Emerging Leaders session in February was particularly enlightening.
“Understanding how to better yourself by creating a strategic plan is
motivating,” she said, adding that it
helped her realize that while her job
is important, she needed to make the
things in her life outside of work important, as well.
The personal strategic planning
workshop was certainly timely for
Kathryn, as it came on the heels of
her marriage in December of last year.
“Yes, we chose the 12-13-14 date,”
she laughed. She and husband, B.J.
Estrada, are settling into married life
and enjoy spending time cooking out
with their friends and spoiling their
nieces and nephews. They also both
enjoy sports, especially playing golf
(Kathryn played golf in high school),
and they are starting to travel whenever they can, with one particular goal in
mind: They want to travel through the
United States to watch the New York
Yankees play.
Kathryn and her newlywed husband B.J.
Estrada enjoy a Yankees game.
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